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Short abstract:

By following cinchona/quinine with respect to German colonialism my paper asks how relationalities of colonial plantations and industrial history can be narrated in decolonizing and power critical ways.

Long abstract:

Quinine was in use for malaria prophylaxis for their colonial soldiers by the British Empire in India, and it was also applied in the colonization of Africa to preserve the health and labor force of the colonizers. Inspired by the Dutch colonial cinchona plantations on Java and within capitalist competition dynamics, German colonial actors aim at cultivating their 'own' cinchona and begin experimenting with cinchona plantations in Africa – with only limited success. While both a German pharmacist and two Frenchmen claim to have invented an extraction method of the substance of quinine from cinchona barks, the industrial production of quinine – one of the forerunners of Germany's chemical and pharmaceutical industry – begins in the German Reich in early 19th century and soon becomes the world's largest quinine production at that time.

My presentation follows cinchona/quinine during German industrialization and the colonization of Africa. I will show how the circulation of seeds and plants, botanical knowledge as well as gardeners, farmers and administrators between European and colonial botanical gardens and plantations was going hand in hand with the expansion of colonial transport, administrative infrastructures and industrialized technologies. I will relate this to the industrial history of quinine extraction, processing and production in the 'German Reich'.

My presentation will be accompanied by self-reflexive questions as: How do the legacies that result from these entanglements affect my own research? And how can these colonial, industrial, and infrastructural entanglements be narrated in decolonizing and power critical ways?